With over 950 responses to our Queen’s IRC Professional Development Awareness Survey, I am pleased to announce the winners of the $50 coffee cards, and share some of the results with you.
We received responses from across Canada, and a few outside Canada, with 53% from Ontario, and 18% from Alberta. The majority of our respondents (64%) are in the 40 to 59 age group. About 22% of the respondents are unionized, and 41% identified HR as their primary role within their organization. Additionally, 50% of respondents indicated that they have attended a Queen’s IRC program.
The insights about professional development are very exciting – 85 % of respondents have attended some form of professional development training in the past two years, with in-class training topping the list. Conferences and trade shows also rank high in questions about how people stay current in their profession. We found that 81% of respondents have a budget at their organization allocated specifically for training, learning, and professional development. When selecting professional development programs, respondents indicated that the most important factor is reputation and quality of the program, followed by speaker qualifications.
The Canadian HR Reporter was cited as the most popular resource or publication that our respondents rely on for career-related purposes. Newspapers and provincial HR association publications are also popular with respondents, while 17% indicated that they do not rely on print publications/resources for career-related purposes. The majority of respondents (80%) use social networking sites for career-related purposes, with LinkedIn ranked as the most popular.
We asked which Queen’s IRC programs respondents were interested in taking in the next two years. The top five are:
- Change Management
- Building Trust in the Workplace
- HR Metrics and Analytics
- Linking HR Strategy to Business Strategy
- Dispute Resolution Skills
Thank you to everyone who took the time to participate in this survey. Congratulations to the winners of the $50 gift card for either Tim Hortons or Starbucks:
- Scott Burant of Dalmeny, SK
- Gail Bannister-Clarke of Brampton, ON
- Joey Brar of Surrey, BC
- Cindy Riley of Fredericton, NB
- Scott Shaw of Calgary, AB
- Pam Parks of Oshawa, ON
